Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-10-29

lbDOTSu lueTtut iOI buTtc Re1cThllOuS, "a
be "A tomb for their citizens Of rank who
shall come after. May the blessing Of the
Heaven above the Heaven rest upon their
work, and make the sleep of Tisno. the
mighty monarch, the likeness OF whose
features Is craven above, u sound and hap
py sleep till the day of awakening (this
phrase is remarkable, as seeming to indi
cate a belief in a future state. -E.,itor), and
also the sleep of his servants. and Of those
Of his race who, rising up after him. shall
yet lay their heads as lowr'
Thou ceest. on, Holly" she said. 'this
people founded the city, Of which the ruins
yet cumber the plain yonder, four thousand
years before this cave was finished. Yet
when first l saw it, two thousand years
ago, was 1t even as 1t Is now. Judge,
therefore, how old must the place have
been! And now follow thou me, and l
will show thee after what fashion this
great city fell when the time was come for
It to fall" and she led the way down 10
the center Of the cave, and stopped at q
spot where q round rock had been let into
q sort of large man-hole in the flooring, ac-
curately filling it just as the iron plates fill
the spaces in the London pavements down
which the Goals are thrown. Thou ~seest,"
she said. Tell me, what is III"
NAY, / know not,"l answered; wherein
she crossed to the left-hand side of the cave
Cooking toward The e~ntrarce), and bid the
mutes hold up the lamps. On the wall
something was painted with n red pigment
ia similar characters to those hewn beneath
the sculpture of Tisno, King of Kor. This
she proceeded to translate to me, the pig
ment still being quite fresh enough to show
the form Of the letters.
IL, Junis, a priest Of the great Temple Of
Kor, write this upon the rock in the year
four thousand eight hundred II three
from the founding Of Kor. Kor is fallen.
No more shall the mighty feast in her
walls. No more shall she rule the world,
and her navies go out to commerce with
the world. Kor is TALENT and her mighty
works, and all the cities of Kor. and all
the harbors that she built, and the canals
.lat she made, are for the wolf and the
owl and the wild swan. and the barbarian
who comes after. T~wenty-and-fiye moons
ago did q cloud settle upon Kor. and the
hundred cities Of Kor, and out of the cloud
came n pestilence that slew her people, old
and young, one with another, and spared
not. One with another they turned black
and cied-the young and the old, the rich
and the poor, the man and the woman, the
prince and the slave. The pestilence slew
and slew, and ceased not by day or by
night, and those who escaped from the
pestilence were slain of the famine. No
longer could the bodies of the children of
Kor be preserved according to the ancient
rites, because Of the number of the dead;
therefore were they hurled into the great
pit beneath the cave, through the hole in
the cave. Then, at last, a remnant Of this
the great people, the light of the whole
world, went down to the coast and took
ship and sailed northward; and now am /,
the priest Junis, who write this. the last
mar left alive out Of this great city of men,
but whether there be any yet left in the
other cities / know not. This do l write
in misery of heart before l die, because
Kor the Imperial Is no more, and because
there are none to worship In her temple,
and all her palaces are empty, and her
princes and her traders and her fair WON.
On have passed of the face Of the earth"
l gave q sigh Of establishment, the utter
desolation depicted In this rude scrawl was
so o~verpowering. 1t was terrible to think
of this solitary survivor Of o mighty people
recording its fate before he, too, went
down into darkness. What must the old
man ave felt as, in CHASTITY terrifying sol
itude, by the light of one lamp -feebly IL
Illuminating a little space OF gloom, he in q
few brief lines daubed the history Of his
nations death upon the cavern wall'
What a subject for the moralist, or the
painter, or, indeed, for any n who can
Think
I followed her on to a side passage open.
ing out Of the main cave, then down q
great number Of steps, and along an I'm
foreground shaft that can not have been
less than sixty feet beneath the surface of
the rock, and was ventilated by curious
borings that ran upward, | do not know
where. Suddenly the passage ended, and
she halted, and babe the mutes hold uI
the lamps, and l saw such o scene rs l am
not likely to see again. We were standing
in an enormous pit, or rather on the edge
of it. for it went down deeper-I don't
know how much-than where we were,
and was edged in with "a low wall Of rock.
So far AZ ] could judge the pit was about
the size of the space beneath the dome OF
st Paul's; and when the lamps were held
up | saw that it was nothing but one vast
charnel- house, being literally full of thous
ands Of human skeletons, which lay piled
up in an enormous cleaning pyramid
formed by the slipping down of the bodies
from the apex rs fresh ones were dropped
in from above. Anything more appalling
than this jumbled mass OF the remains OF
q departed race J. can not imagine, and
what made It even more dreadful was that
In this dry air a good number of the bodies
had simply become dessiccated with the
skin on them, and now, fixed in every con-
ceivable position, stared ut one out OF the
heaps of white bones, grotesQuely horrible
caricatures of humanity. In my astonish-
ment I made an ejaculation, and the echoes
Of my voice ringing in the vaulted place
disturbed a skull hat had been accurately
balanced eor many thousands Of years near
the apex Of the pile. Down it came with a
run, bounding along merrily toward US,
and Of course bringing an avalanche OF
other bones after it, till at last the whole
place ratified with their movement, as
though the skeletons were getting up to
greet us.
Come" I said, III have seen enough.
These are the bodies of those who died OF
the great sickness. / suppose" added. IS
we turned away.
Yes. The people of Kor always EN-
balmed their dead, like the Egyptians. but
their art was greater than the art OF the
Egyptians, because whereas the Egyptians
d~isembowled and drew tire brain. the peO-
pie OF Kor injected fluid into the veins, and
tbus reached every mart. But STAY. thou